The present invention relates to a device to facilitate tipping of a container, and more particularly, to a device for supporting and stabilizing a water-filled vacuum cleaner tank so that the tank may be tipped and emptied into a raised waste receptacle.
In the performance of many commercial and industrial cleaning services, such as carpet cleaning, a vacuum cleaner is used to collect both wet and dry wastes. Typically, such a vacuum cleaner has a cylindrical vacuum cleaner tank which stands from thirty to forty inches high and weighs from 65 to 80 pounds or more. The motor for such a vacuum cleaner may be incorporated in a removable lid. A tubular inlet, to which a vacuum hose is attached, usually projects from the sidewall of the vacuum cleaner tank near its upper rim. While in operation, fifteen to twenty gallons of water may be contained in the tank. Because of the great weight of the tank when filled, it may have wheels or casters to facilitate its movement.
To drain waste water, some vacuum cleaner tanks have drain valves in the bottom. However, a tank that does not have a drain valve, or that is being used where there is no floor drain, must be lifted and dumped into a waste receptable such as a sink or a toilet bowl. Because of the great weight of a water-filled tank and because of the instability of the container during tipping resulting from use of the wheels or casters on which it rests, lifting and dumping a tank without the aid of a mechanical device is disadvantageous. The tank may roll away from or off the side of the waste receptacle and fall to the floor, dumping its contents and damaging itself because of the force of the fall.
In the past, a variety of devices have been marketed for aiding the dumping of filled vacuum cleaner tanks and other containers. Such devices have wheeled stands and use various trunnion arrangements to which the tank is secured for vertical rotation. Such devices require that the person dumping the tank step on the stand, to keep the device from rolling downward and to counterbalance the rotational movement caused by the rotated tank. A vacuum cleaner incorporating such a device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,063,082 issued Nov. 13, 1962, to E. N. Rosenburg and entitled "Suction Cleaner." While such devices have been useful in the past, as a consequence of their bulk and complexity, they require regular maintenance, tend to be costly and are usable only with specially built vacuum cleaner tanks.
Consequently, there has been a need for a simple and inexpensive device which guides against a receptacle into which the contents of a container are to be dumped, which causes the container to be safely and easily pivoted about the rim of the receptacle, and which simultaneously stabilizes the container against rolling away from or off the side of the receptacle.